The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has recommended that the Department of Defense (DOD) come up with a reporting strategy to enhance oversight of weapon systems developed using multiple pathways.
GAO conducted its annual assessment of DOD’s weapon programs and found that the Pentagon’s new acquisition framework enables program managers to implement one or more of six acquisition pathways, including middle-tier acquisition and major capability acquisition pathways, according to a report published Tuesday.
The lack of a reporting strategy “not only limits DOD's visibility into these programs but also hinders the quality of its congressional reporting and makes the full cost and schedule of the eventual weapon system more difficult to ascertain,” the GAO report reads.
The congressional watchdog also found that 16 major defense acquisition programs exhibited delays in schedule due in part to poor system performance and test or delivery delays.
Most of those programs do not consistently plan to acquire product knowledge that could help speed up delivery of weapons systems and reduce costs, according to GAO.
